by David Gilman
Tom Gordon had made a casual remark, a meandering explanation of how he and other explorer-scientists had gone to Switzerland many years ago. Farentino immediately became more attentive. Gordon’s memory was like a jigsaw puzzle, and not all the pieces fitted, but the scraps and recollections began to form a complete picture for Farentino.
Environmental groups had investigated the huge nuclear particle accelerator establishment in Switzerland and had been invited to see for themselves the safety measures in place. Farentino remembered those days, could almost recall the article someone had written, and that he had published, about the melting glaciers in the Alps and the danger of causing any electromagnetic energy that could contribute towards climate change in that area. Quietly, so as not to cause alarm, safeguards were initiated for the underground research work-like a firewall on a computer. A barrier. But no one knew if it was sufficient should a major catastrophe strike the area.
The lying, deceitful Angelo Farentino had now inadvertently been given information that Fedir Tishenko must be told. Even Tishenko could not have predicted the destruction that he would bring if he went ahead with his plans to harness nature’s energy. Could he?
If Farentino went to the authorities they would arrest him, whether they believed him or not about this long-forgotten theory. Nor could he hide. If this information was correct, everything Farentino owned, every scrap of wealth would be destroyed. Stock markets would tumble, banks would close, property would become worthless. Meltdown. Massive destruction.
If he tried to run, to shift money around the world, to go and live in Brazil or on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Fedir Tishenko had the resources to find and kill him. If he did not run, everything was finished anyway. It was a no-win situation. It wasn’t that vast numbers of people would die or the environment would be irreversibly contaminated that bothered him-his wealth was going to be destroyed. That was why he had betrayed everyone in the first place. Vast wealth. This was so unfair. Why did he have to learn about this? Why hadn’t fate put someone else in the hot seat?
Angelo Farentino was no hero, but he had to use every charming, persuasive skill he possessed to convince Tishenko that what he was planning could create hell on Earth.
The vans stopped to refuel, but Sharkface kept Bobby’s van out of sight on the slip road to the garage and restaurant complex. They filled containers with diesel and refueled it in the darkness of the trees.
Sayid turned his body around and braced his back against the paneled sides, making sure his plaster cast hid the scribbling on the bottom of Bobby’s surfboard. The door slid back-Sayid flinched. Peaches climbed in. She looked at him and he averted his eyes. Don’t make eye contact with anything dangerous, Max had once told him.
The girl gave him something that looked like soggy cheese in a flaccid roll filled with bits of stir-fried vegetables. It tasted like a sweaty sock full of garden cuttings, but he was starving, and he was desperate for the cup of hot chocolate she held.
Outside he could hear Sharkface telling the others what route they would take. Snatches of place names, including the city of Geneva-he couldn’t catch the rest; his chewing was making too much noise in his ears. He gobbled the food, scared that the cold-faced Peaches might take it away from him. She sat on her haunches, watching him. Her eyes studied every bit of the inside of the van, searching for anything that might allow Sayid to make an escape, or cause problems on the road.
Sayid made sure his foot did not move away from the surfboard. Dare he risk provoking her by asking questions?
Be nice. Be grateful. “Thanks, Peaches. I needed that.”
She nodded and gave him the hot chocolate.
Ask her. Be careful! “I don’t understand why you’re with these creeps,” Sayid said quietly. “I mean, Bobby was such a nice bloke.”
She snatched the hot drink away from his bound hands, splashes scalding him. She threw the contents out onto the ground. “You’re not here to ask questions, Sayid. You can’t talk and drink at the same time-so you’ve just made your choice.”
“I don’t know anything about what’s going on!” he said angrily, desperately wishing he could have had the warmth from the drink.
“We figured that, but you’re more use to us alive than dead for a while longer. You don’t think your friend would abandon you, do you?”
Max! They were using Sayid as a trap! How? They didn’t know where Max was exactly, unless … Sayid’s thoughts slammed into a brick wall. What was the common denominator? Sophie. That was who Peaches had sent a text to. Peaches and Sophie were working together!
Peaches smiled, climbed out and slammed the door closed. Sayid had to find the answer contained in these numbers. And somehow get that information to Max.
Because once they had Max, Sayid was of no use to them.
They would kill him.
Fauvre wiped the sweat from his eyes, wheeling himself backwards and forwards, gathering pieces of equipment. He shifted a crude, old-fashioned microscope into position. Once cutting-edge, now years out of date compared to modern technology, it still had a use in a shoestring operation such as his.
Fauvre held out his hand for Zabala’s crystal. Max felt a possessive surge grip him. He had been entrusted with it by the dying man, had fought for his life to protect its secret and was now handing it over to the father of the girl who had betrayed him.
After a moment’s hesitation he dropped it into the outstretched hand. Fauvre rolled it between his fingertips, caressing it as if it were a priceless diamond. And it was priceless if its secret could be understood.
Fauvre felt the boy’s hesitation. “All right. Let’s see what my friend was killed for.”
The air in the room was heavy with sweat; the breeze helped cool it a little, but the acrid stench of burnt straw still caught their throats. Fauvre wiped his eyes with his sleeve and lowered his face to the lens. The darkened room was lit only by the diffused glow from a light box. Max could barely breathe with the tension. If Fauvre understood what was on that crystal it would be tantamount to opening the vault of a secret tomb.
After what seemed a long time, Fauvre pushed himself back from the table.
“Give me the birth charts,” Fauvre said.
He spun his chair around and clamped the two pieces of paper onto a whiteboard-the original chart Max had found in the chateau and the latest that Zabala had sent to Fauvre. He quickly made a bigger drawing of them so they could both see exactly what they were talking about.
Max watched the black marker slide across the whiteboard as Fauvre sketched the same-shaped triangle that was etched on the crystal, placing a letter at each corner-E, S, Q.
“Several years ago three distant bodies in our solar system were discovered,” Fauvre said as he wrote them out, Eris, Sedna and Quaoar, pronouncing each one as he did, like a teacher back at school: “Eeris, Sedna and Kway-o-are.”
He touched each point of the triangle. “E, S and Q. Zabala could not have known of their existence all those years ago. Back then the planets told him a major disaster was going to happen, but there was something missing-these planets and their conjunction.”
“Their alignment? That’s special, is it?” Max asked.
“Exactly!” Fauvre said. “These are the triggers and they are now in the correct place in the zodiac.”
Max wasn’t getting it. But he concentrated as if his life depended on it-which it might. He knew the moon affected the Earth’s crops and tides, so perhaps these planets could also exert subtle forces. Max’s fingers hovered across the diagrams, touching the unlocked secret, which as yet didn’t make complete sense.
“Zabala had all the vital pieces for his prediction,” Max said. “He wanted you to have the pendant. Because he had sent you the new chart he made.”
Fauvre spoke carefully. “I am convinced Zabala’s prediction of a natural disaster is correct and it will be brought on by a man-made force. Those three missing heavenly bodies now lend an enormous weight
of conviction to its happening.”
Max could only go so far with crazy ideas. “I can’t deal with this stuff. There’s no logic. There’s no reasoning behind it. All of this because of a lousy triangle!” he blurted out. His dad had always taught him to be practical, to see the reality behind the facade of nonscientific claims.
“You’re wrong, Max! This information would have died with Zabala had you not taken responsibility and seen this thing through.” Fauvre spoke slowly and precisely, letting the boy’s frustration settle. “Max, this is not the idiocy of reading a horoscope in a daily newspaper. This is a scientist-my friend Zabala-discovering a powerful universal force.”
“I want something more definite to go on,” Max replied.
“This is precise. It is definite,” Fauvre replied. He drew the new triangle into the diagram Zabala had sent him. “This gives us the planetary alignments at the exact hour, day and year that this catastrophe will occur: 11:34 on the eighth of March.”
“Two days’ time,” Max said.
Fauvre held up the numbers he’d scribbled on a pad, taken from the crystal:
7 24 8-10 4 9 12 25-7 11 9 17
“But this is one part of Zabala’s secret I cannot understand. What do you think these numbers mean? I do not believe they have any bearing on the astrological horoscopes. There is no relationship between them and the drawings.”
“It’s a code of some description,” Max said, and as he did so, his stomach plummeted. Sayid! His face intruded into Max’s thoughts. There was nothing he could do about his friend. Not right now.
Fauvre saw the look of anguish on his face. “There is something you haven’t told me?”
Max nodded. “There was a sheet of paper with a square of numbers, twenty-five numbers. It made no sense except they all added up to sixty-five no matter which way you added them.”
“Then that square holds a message. Zabala was passing on vital information, perhaps even telling us how the catastrophe might be averted.”
Max racked his brains. There was no way he could remember the magic square numbers. “To encrypt anything you need a word or a phrase. The people writing the code and those deciphering it have to know it. It’s like a combination for a vault.” Max was sunk even if he had the magic square. He did not have the key words.
“We only found the numbers in the square and those on the crystal,” he said. “We never found the key words to help us decipher it.”
“But don’t you see, Max? Somewhere Zabala has given you those key words to unlock his message. You’ve seen them, or been given them, or been told them. Where is the piece of paper?” Fauvre asked.
“My mate’s got it.”
“And where is he?”
“He should be home, but I haven’t been able to get hold of him. Maybe the cops have him back in England. It doesn’t matter right now.”
Max moved to a wall map. “The triangle brought me here from Biarritz. The other two sides join up …” Max’s finger traced a line. “Here.”
“Geneva,” Fauvre said, alarmed.
Fear twisted Max’s stomach. “The particle accelerator at CERN.”
“You know about it?” Fauvre said.
Europe’s organization for nuclear research. Max was supposed to have gone on a school trip there a couple of years ago but was in a cross-country competition instead. Sayid had gone and said it was stunning. A hundred meters underground, a huge circle of accelerator tubes, eight and a half kilometers across, twenty-seven kilometers in circumference. It was the size of London Underground’s Circle Line. Massive. Biggest, most complex piece of machinery in history!
Sayid tended to get excited about science.
This was every physicist’s dream. The big bang theory. They were going to accelerate beams of protons at very nearly the speed of light. The beams would smash particles together, creating an unbelievable burst of energy. “Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!” Sayid had shouted, stamping his feet like a madman, nearly falling over himself with exhilaration. In fact, he’d rabbited on for days about it. Drove Max crazy. Now Max wished he’d listened more attentively.
Fauvre tapped the map. “Those scientists are attempting to find out how this universe came about. They want to determine when the known forces of nature were born-one trillionth of a second after the moment of creation,” Fauvre told him. “It makes sense. Zabala once spent months in those mountains.”
Max’s gaze stayed locked on Lake Geneva. Suppose, just suppose, every single thing he had discovered was true? A disaster striking that area would cause death and destruction on a vast scale.
“The particle accelerator. Sophie must be taking the pendant to someone there,” Max said. “But when she delivers it and they discover it’s worthless …”
He didn’t say anything more. Fauvre’s stricken face reflected his own. Sophie would die.
Zabala had given them the date and time of the catastrophe, and now Max knew where it was supposed to happen: the French-Swiss border at 11:34 a.m. on March 8.
Their stunned silence was broken by Abdullah barging into the room, gesturing with Peaches’s photo. “That pattern on her ski suit, it can be many things.” And then he smiled. “But two things for sure it is!” He put a couple of printouts on the desk. “This is a photograph of chain lightning. See, it is like a piece of coral in the night sky. And this”-he shifted the other sheet into view-“this is the corporate logo of Perun Industries.”
“Lightning,” Max said, realization stabbing him, “brings light… Lux Ferre …”
“What? Zabala used those words in one of his letters …,” Fauvre said, scrabbling among Zabala’s documents. “Here!” He held up a crumpled sheet of torn paper. “Lux Ferre. This is what he feared! He says so. It made no sense to me.”
“They were clues,” Max said. “What sort of company is it?”
“Oil and gas. The exploration and commercial rights were sold years ago, but the man who owned Perun kept the name. There are no shareholders. It is a private company worth billions. It would appear the man became a recluse. His name is Fedir Tishenko, a Ukrainian. And he lives somewhere in Switzerland.”
Max knew he had found his enemy.
And Fauvre was correct-Zabala had given him the key word. He’d shouted it moments before he died.
Lucifer.
Sayid. Where are you?
L-U-C–I-F-E-R.
The key.
23
Fedir Tishenko massaged aloe vera cream into his scaly skin. Climbers used moisturizer because altitude and wind would parch their faces, but for Tishenko it had been a daily ritual since the lightning god had struck him. Small pieces of dead skin would peel away under his fingertips, and his hairless body was like that of a reptile.
Was it the cruel hand of nature that created monsters, or were they born? He did not care. Society had rejected most of those who worked for him. Either out of gratitude or out of fear, they did his bidding. Loyalty was bought one way or another. The core group of scientists, though, were his fellow outcasts. Some had a physical disability; others had experienced uncaring, almost cruel treatment because of their mental state. Each one driven into his own hell of desperate loneliness, all had wanted a better, fairer life, and they had found their champion in Fedir Tishenko. Only he among them had the driving ambition and desire for immortality, and the money to achieve it. He had offered them the chance to strike back at an uncaring world. Tishenko would harness the awesome power of the universe in a shattering moment of light and fire, the intensity of which had not been seen since the moment of creation.
Tishenko was going to create a new life form, so it was only to be expected that many others would have to die in order for his ambition to be achieved. He was no raving lunatic twisted with hatred, planning to commit wanton acts of genocide-he was chosen.
As far as anyone outside his group of scientists was concerned, Fedir Tishenko was investing everything he owned to research and create an alternative energy source, much needed b
y a wounded world. So Angelo Farentino, in all his ignorance, standing in the room and telling him of the enormous disaster that might befall vast tracts of Europe if he went ahead with his project, had no bearing on his plan.
“So the connection between Max Gordon and Zabala is purely coincidental?” Tishenko asked as he peeled another layer of skin from his cheekbone.
“Yes!” Did this madman not understand his real discovery-the disaster about to befall them at Tishenko’s own hand? This fool was going to kill them all.
Tishenko nodded. Neither the boy’s father nor his scientific friends at the environment agencies were involved. Good. The boy’s presence was a fluke-but he had information that Tishenko needed. Fate had put Max Gordon in the path of a cosmic train, and he would die. Yet he had proved impossible to stop so far. He had survived an avalanche, escaped Tishenko’s hunters, avoided capture by the police and another attack at d’Abbadie’s chateau. He had fled with Zabala’s secret and survived the backstreets of Marrakech. Of the attack on the animal sanctuary there had been no word. Failure, once again, had to be the outcome of that operation. Perhaps Max Gordon was charmed, protected by a supernatural force.
It did not matter-only Tishenko himself was the Chosen One.
“When I was a teenager,” Tishenko said as he poured a tall glass of mountain water, “I was traveling through Kraminsk, a small town that has two bridges over its river. I and the men, my vucari, traveled across the second bridge, which was virtually deserted. Then, Angelo, I heard cries and screams. A small child had fallen into the river from the bridge upstream. It was cold, violent water, so the girl was helpless, a rag doll at the mercy of the current. I am not afraid of anything, so I jumped in and saved the child.”